How to move to Lagos

Moving to Lagos has an order of operations, and doing it out of order costs weeks. Almost everything you need is gated by something else.

The chain is: NIN → SIM → BVN and bank account → everything else.

The order

1. Somewhere to sleep for a month. Not a lease. You cannot judge a Lagos neighbourhood, or its commute, from outside Lagos.
2. A NIN. Free at a NIMC centre, and the thing everything else needs.
3. A SIM, linked to that NIN. MTN, Airtel, Glo or 9mobile. Buy from a branded shop, not a table, so it is registered to you.
4. A BVN and a bank account. The BVN is the banking industry’s identifier and is separate from the NIN.
5. Then a flat, a car, a pension account, a tax record.

Your NIN and NIMC

If you are not Nigerian

The route in matters more than the visa you arrived on.

• A Subject to Regularisation (STR) visa is the employment route. You enter on it and your employer files for residence within 90 days.
• The residence permit itself is the CERPAC, valid 12 months and renewed annually. The fee is quoted in dollars, currently USD 2,000.
• A company with foreign shareholders needs to register with the NIPC and hold at least ₦100,000,000 in share capital before it can get a business permit or an expatriate quota.

Naturalisation requires 15 years’ residence under section 27 of the Constitution. Registration by marriage is available to a foreign woman married to a Nigerian man under section 26(2)(a), and there is no equivalent route the other way round. That asymmetry is the constitutional position, not an omission here.

Money

Open the account before you need it. A Tier 1 account can be opened with very little, but it caps your balance at ₦300,000 and your daily transactions at ₦50,000, which you will hit immediately if you are paying rent.

Nigeria runs on instant bank transfer, not on cards and not on mobile money the way Ghana or Kenya do. Transfers of ₦10,000 or more carry a flat ₦50 levy.

Bring no more than USD 10,000 in cash without declaring it to customs.

Housing, and the number that shocks people

Rent is paid annually, in advance, and a landlord will ask for two years. Budget about ₦4,140,000 to move into a mid-range one-bedroom once the agency fee, the “legal” fee and the caution deposit are counted.

Do not sign anything in your first fortnight.

The rent advance, explained

Health

Register for health insurance early, because there is a waiting period of about 30 days before you can claim.

Lagos runs its own mandatory state scheme, Ilera Eko, at ₦8,500 a year for an individual or ₦40,000 for a family of six.

Take malaria seriously from the first week. A rapid test costs about ₦3,000 and any fever is worth one.

First month costs, roughly

Your first week checklist